


I Want to See the Shapes the Clouds Make

by DemiCas



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Almost Canon-Compliant, Attempted Suicide, Depression, Grief, I’m so so sorry, Loss, M/M, Sad, Suicidal Ideation, canon character death, coda to 13.1, death has already happened, implied proto-Destiel, no one dies however, other than those already dead, why am I writing sad things?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-19
Updated: 2019-01-19
Packaged: 2019-10-12 14:10:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,649
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17469077
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DemiCas/pseuds/DemiCas
Summary: Coda to 13.1.I could only write this because we know what comes later.





	I Want to See the Shapes the Clouds Make

“I never noticed clouds before, Dean.”

They had been leaning back against Baby’s hood, beers in hand. Cas’s voice was eager and quick, and Dean smiled.

“I mean, of course I _noticed_ them — I’ve flown through them often enough — but I never really _looked_ at them.” Castiel frowned a little, as if he were disappointed with himself. “I had heard of humans seeing things in clouds, you know, the shapes of animals or people, but I had thought nothing of it, thought it was just human nonsense.” He looked up at the dappled sky and broke into a brilliant smile, that broad, purely happy smile so seldom seen since he’d returned from Purgatory. Dean felt himself go very still at the sight.

“But I see it now,” Castiel said, gesturing. “Look, don’t you think that cloud resembles a _Physeter macrocephalus_? Or that one there —” He swung his hand around, sloshing beer. “— isn’t it shaped somewhat like a trireme?”

Dean had laughed, feeling it all the way down in his gut. “Whatever, dude,” he said, grinning over the lip of his beer bottle. He squinted at the sky. “Not sure what a trireme is, but I think I see a Viking ship, maybe?”

Cas had beamed at him, and Dean had had to look away.

 

Dean didn’t know how long he’d been staring at his hands in the water.

He knew running water would be better for the cut across the back of his right hand, but he had burns, too, burns from when they

from when he

from when

from when he’d burned himself, and they felt better in the cool, still water in the sink, so he stood there, at little stooped over, staring at the wobbly image of his hands and their burns and the cut across the back of his right from where an errant branch had scraped him. He watched idly as the cut bled into the water, a thin, red ribbon billowing and curling out in filmy, insubstantial clouds. They twisted and curled, but he couldn’t see any shapes in them, not like when he and

when he and

when he

when he’d been leaning against the Impala, staring into the hard, blue, Kansas sky, seeing whales and Viking ships and smiling into his beer.

“Dean?”

Sam’s voice jolted him like a taser; water sloshed in the sink. He looked down, focusing again after…how long? He’d stopped bleeding: the red clouds had dispersed, diluted into water barely pink. The lips of the cut were bleached and ragged, his fingertips wrinkled and numb.

“Dean!”

“Yeah,” he said. His voice sounded strange to his ears.

A creak, and Sam was crowding into the room. “What are you doing in here?” he asked in that peevish tone that told Dean he was worried but trying to hide it. In his peripheral vision he saw his brother stop and go still before surging forward and reaching for Dean’s hands.

“What the hell, Dean?” Sam said sharply, turning Dean’s hands palm up to examine them. “Have you just been soaking all this time? You look like a handful of raisins.”

Dean shrugged. “Felt good on the burns,” he said.

Sam’s expression crumbled, just for an instant, then went firm and businesslike. “Let me,” he said, telling, not asking.

Dean suffered himself to be led to the bedroom, to the bed. He sat silently, staring at nothing, while Sam fetched the med kit, then fussed around him with burn cream and gauze and antibiotic ointment.

Sam prodded the edges of the cut, pursing his lips. “Well, you don’t need stitches at least,” he muttered as he dabbed hydrogen peroxide on the wound and applied butterfly bandages to keep it closed. Dean didn’t flinch. He didn’t feel it.

Sam’s movements slowed as he wrapped gauze around Dean’s hand. When he spoke, his voice was low and careful. “You know, Dean —” he began.

“Don’t, Sam,” Dean said. Flat, leaden.

Sam’s brow furrowed, but he stayed mercifully silent as he tied off the bandage and repacked the kit. Dean sat motionless, hands loose in his lap, gaze fixed on a random spot on the floor.

Sam stood with a small grunt and a sigh. “Do you need anything?” he asked at last, gently. “You hungry? You haven’t eaten since —”

Dean cut him off. “I’m good, Sammy. A little tired. I think I’ll try to get some sleep. We gotta leave early tomorrow.”

He didn’t look up to see his brother’s expression. He already knew what it looked like.

“Let me know —”

“Yeah.”

Sam hesitated, then laid his hand on Dean’s shoulder, and Dean felt as if the weight of it would crush him to the ground. Then the weight was gone, and Sammy was, too.

Dean lay back on the bed. It was the one Kelly had died in, the one Jack had been born in, he supposed. He tried to think of them, to feel sorrow for the one’s death or anger for the other’s birth. He tried to bring Kelly’s face to his mind, her wide green eyes, her sometimes shy smile, but he couldn’t. He even tried to picture Jack, fresh-faced and confused, not looking anything like the son of Satan, damn him. But all he saw was light. Blue-white light streaming, pouring

streaming out of

light pouring out of

Cas.

He put his hand over his mouth, blinked at the ceiling.

Cas was

was

Cas was

dead.

Dean squeezed his eyes shut. His breath seized in his lungs, a hard, painful convulsion in his chest. Another, his mouth gaping and gulping for air his body refused. Once more, and then he could breathe again, and everything was suddenly quiet and still, as if the world were very, very far away.

Cas was dead.

The thought lay in his mind like a fallen leaf, motionless and naked.

Dean breathed in slowly.

Cas had been dead before. Dean had _seen_ him die, seen him fall, too many times: exploded, stabbed, slipping out of Dean’s grip. Disappearing slowly into the reservoir like a Christ who’d forgotten how to walk on _top_ of the water. He’d always come back, though, raised by someone or something way above Dean’s paygrade: Chuck, Naomi, Gadreel. No matter what, no matter who, he’d always come back to them. Back to Dean.

But Chuck was gone, now. Naomi and Gadreel were dead. And this time

this time they

this time they’d burned the body. _Dean_ had burned the body.

Not the vessel. There had been no Jimmy for years. The body _._ _Castiel’s_ body. Dean had burned it to ashes.

He lowered his hand to his side, opened his eyes and stared at the ceiling. It was an old house, abandoned. Cracks ran across the white plaster; mold bloomed in billowy shapes where rain had seeped in from a leaky attic. It was a distraction, a way to be awake without images of fire flashing across his vision, a way to not see that shape under the sheet, the still, waxen face briefly revealed and quickly hidden again.

_“I think we’re seeing the same thing, Dean; a Roman trireme and a Viking longship have similar profiles, after all.”_

He’d been absurdly pleased by that, that they’d seen the same thing in those stupid white clouds.

Dean let his eyes drift out of focus. The shapes in the ceiling swam in his vision, combining, breaking apart, combining again. Cracks became edges and outlines, the mold softer forms.

“Look, Cas,” he said in a broken whisper. His hand twitched by his side, fingers waving vaguely at a spot over his head and to the right. “That one looks like a wendigo, dontcha think? Or a wraith, but maybe the teeth are wrong.”

Mom was dead, too. Most likely. Definitely. Lucifer would never let her live, not after she’d shoved him back through the crack right before it closed, trapping them both in Apocalypse World. He’d have killed her right there. Dean knew it.

But he hadn’t _seen_ it. There had been no body. No cold, stiff form to wrap in sheets and curtains, to lay on the pyre and douse in gasoline. Nothing for Dean to burn.

It occurred to Dean then that he’d known Cas a lot longer than he’d known his own mother.

The shapes on the ceiling writhed, wavering. He blinked, but they wouldn’t resolve. “Shoulda had a Viking ship, Cas,” he murmured. “Shields and swords and shit. Warrior’s funeral, not a hunter’s.”

Dean shivered suddenly. The house was cold; somehow Cas or Kelly had gotten the electricity on, but there was no heat, only the fire, and no one had bothered with that since…since everything had happened. He must have lain there longer than he thought, trying to read the ceiling, and the chill had slowly seeped into him, bone deep. He wrapped his arms around himself, but it didn’t help. His whole body was trembling now, tremors surging through him like waves, setting his teeth rattling. He felt like he was coming apart.

He lurched to his feet, shuddering and chattering. The bathroom. There was a bathtub there, wasn’t there? No heat in the furnace, but there was heat in the pipes. He staggered through the door. Yes. Nice big tub. His hand shook as he turned on the water, hot as he could stand.

He took off his boots. His boot knife slipped out, and he stared at it for a moment, took in its shape, the familiarity of it in this unfamiliar place. It was a good knife: small enough to hide, but large enough to get the job done. He picked it up and turned it over in hands no longer shaking. Everything was quiet. Nice and sharp, too, like a surgeon’s scalpel. Sharp knife like this, and you’d hardly

you’d hardly feel

you’d hardly feel it at all.

 

Sam heard the water running in the upstairs bath at rather a remove, at first. His head was too stuffed with loss and regret to track everything in real time; he felt as if the world was operating several seconds in the future and he was running to catch up, knowing he never would.

He buried his face in his hands, scrubbed at his day-old beard, his aching eyes. Mom gone ( _gone_ , not necessarily _dead_ , no matter what Dean said). Kelly dead. Cas dead. All they had left was Jack, who Dean wanted to _kill_ , for godssake.

Dean.

Shit.

Sam’s eyes stung. Cas was dead. Really dead this time, burned to ash and grease on a hunter’s pyre, and Dean was upstairs pretending he was going to _sleep_. Right. God, the lies they told themselves, over and over and over.

The sounds of the house washed over him, white noise drowning his thoughts, but even through his haze of grief something worried at the back of his mind, something out of place. He raised his head, not just hearing, now, but _listening_. The desultory creaks and groans meant nothing in an old building like this, but was that water running upstairs? Again? It was too loud for the sink this time, the pitch too low.

Sam frowned. What the hell was his brother doing? Running a _bath_? Since when did Dean take baths?

He went very, very still.

Since when did Dean take _baths?_

An instant later Sam was pounding up the stairs, two at a time, his heart in his throat. “ _Dean!_ ”

The door was locked, but that barely slowed him down. One kick and the frame splintered, door blowing inward. Sam was dimly aware of a surprised shout from behind him. “Stay back, Jack,” he barked. “I’ll take care of this.”

“But Sam…”

Sam whirled, snarling in his fear. “I mean it, Jack! Downstairs — now!”

He didn’t wait to see if the boy complied but turned and surged into the bathroom.

Dean was sitting more or less upright in the tub, fully clothed save for his boots and overshirt. He was staring down into the water, his expression bemused. “What y’think, Sammy,” he slurred. He did not look up. “A fi-see-ter mac-ro-seh-fallus, yeah?”

Blood. Great roiling clouds of it streaming out of two long gashes in Dean’s arms. Lengthwise, between radius and ulna, not lateral, across the tendons of the wrists. All the better to bleed out, my dear.

Sam froze for a fraction of a second, seeing only red but refusing its meaning. Dean’s eyes lifted, glittering and empty. “Thassa _sperm whale_ , y’know. S’what Cas said.”

With a strangled cry, Sam snapped back into focus, and he leapt forward, grabbing Dean by his armpits and hauling him out of the bath. They crashed together to the floor, Sam slamming his back into the wall, Dean collapsing between his sprawled legs. Sam snatched a towel from the bar above him, then reached around and wrapped one end around Dean’s right forearm, the other around his left. He clamped both his hands over the wounds and held on like grim death.

“What the hell, Dean?” Sam panted. “What were you thinking?”

Dean shuddered in his grip but didn’t try to fight free. “I jus’ wanted t’see the shapes the clouds made,” he said. “Me ’n Cas — there was this one time, see, an’ we — an’ we —” He broke off with a choked sound, and his body began to shake with grief and shock.

Sam closed his eyes as the world broke in half. Tears began to slip down his face, cool tracks in the hot fog of the bathroom. “It’s okay,” he murmured. “It’ll be okay. You gotta hang on, man. Cas would want you to.”

“S’not okay,” Dean groaned between eerily silent, wrenching sobs. “Cas’s dead. For real, this time. I _burned_ ’im.” He stopped and sucked in a shaky breath. “And I never…I never…”

Sam laid his cheek on the top of Dean’s head, heart like a stone in his chest. “He knew, Dean. He knew.”

Dean made a small, lost noise in the back of his throat, then went completely limp in Sam’s arms.

“Sam?”

Sam turned his head just enough to see Jack standing nervously in the hall, eyes round. “He okay?”

Sam almost laughed, but bit it back; it felt too much like hysteria. “He’ll be fine,” he said, more firmly than he felt. “Go get the med kit. White box with a red cross on it. It’s on the kitchen table.”

Jack clattered away. Sam leaned forward again, spoke directly in his brother’s ear.

“You gotta hold on, Dean,” he said. “I know…I know how much it hurts, believe me. How it makes you want to die, but you can’t, man, you can’t.” The stone in his chest lurched heavily. “You’re all I’ve got left, Dean. I know it’s not the same, but I can’t do this without you. You gotta stay with me.”

“Sammy,” Dean breathed, agonized.

Sam’s fingers were cramping around Dean’s forearms, but he managed a slightly tighter squeeze. A question, a plea. “ _Please_ , Dean.”

Dean turned his head a little, hair brushing across Sam’s chin. His eyes fluttered open, and Sam bit his lip at what he saw there. “I’ll try,” Dean said. “But it’s so hard.” He turned away again. “’M so _tired_ , Sammy.”

“I know.” 

 

Dean walked out to the Impala the next morning stiffly, shoulders tense, back tight. His arms itched from the neat stitches Sam had put in, but in the end he’d only lost a couple pints. He was awake. He was alive.

He put his hand on Baby’s warm roof and breathed. Do it for Sammy. Put the key in the ignition, foot on the gas. Leave the ashes behind. And if he left more than that, no one else would know.

The sky was bright, blue and white. The sun caught off the lake, dazzling.

Dean did not look at the clouds.


End file.
